LCG: Everything I know about the Bible I learned in 15 minutes!

It is always fun to watch COG leaders spin numbers and surveys to fit the desired outcome they were seeking.  Johnathan McNair is starting off in his new HQ leadership roles by being the best spin doctor since Bob Thiel invented his dreamy improperly named "continuing" Church of God.

LCG recently sent out a survey to members to see how much time they spend in Bible study. The first question was how much time they "wanted" to spend studying the Bible and then how much time they actually did.  Herbert Armstrong will NOT be pleased with the results! God's ironclad golden rule for Bible Study, prayer and mediation is 1 hour each! LCG must be doing something right though.  With claims of 7,000 members, an outstanding amount of 300 responded to the survey.  Good job LCG!

Living Education Update 

A big thank you to those who took a moment to respond to our survey last week! Almost 300 people answered the brief questions about their Bible study time.  

The first question asked about people’s target amount of time to spend in study, while the second asked how much time, on average, they actually did spend.  

Half of those who responded set a goal of studying an hour a day. Of the remainder, about 50 planned to study 30 minutes a day, and about 20 aimed for 15 minutes. Two hours is the goal for approximately 60 members.  

With those goals in mind, the vast majority of those who responded, about 110 people, reported that they actually spend about 30 minutes a day on Bible study. Roughly 70 people spend an hour, and the remainder around 15 minutes, though about 20 of those surveyed said they spend two hours a day in study.  

The results showed that God’s people do want to dig into their Bibles! Whether we have a lot of time in our day or a little, consistent rehearsal of the principles of life found in the Bible will pay off by establishing and maintaining a solid foundation in the way of God.—Jonathan McNair

It is still quite obvious that most LCG members prefer to let their overlords tell them what scripture means instead of actually dissecting it themselves.  After all, most of these men were trained at the once holy Ambassador College, at the feet of Herbert Armstrong, with his 6-month Bible education that happened in a public library.

Crackpot Wade Cox: You have less than 7 years to repent or Jesus and the Mohammads of the Middle East will slaughter you.

It is always fascinating to watch the various leaders of the COG's as they mentally break down from delusional beliefs and teachings. For some reason, their god is the nastiest vengeful god one could ever imagine.  It is like they look with glee with the hope to see the people of the world slaughtered by their god during the end times for being such grievous sinners. Only they and their crazy band of followers are the true believers.

Wade Cox says:

So there is no doubt to the people seeking the First Resurrection this is the bottom line.

1. Repent and be baptised

1. Have hands laid on for receipt of the Holy Spirit

1. Keep the weekly Sabbath and daily prayer.

1. Keep the Sabbath of the New Moon and do not trade (Amos 8:5)

1. Keep the Lord’s Supper on the night of 14 Abib according to the Temple Calendar, participating in the bread and wine and footwashing.

1. Keep the Passover on the night beginning 15 Abib and keep the full seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (Penalty for failure is to be cut off (Ex 12:15, 19) and all the Armstrong systems have failed to do this since 1965 and before then kept it only by accident due to Hillel).

1. Keep the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost on the 50th day which is the First day of the week following the 49th day Sabbath which commences the Feast.

1. Keep Trumpets on 1 Tishri, 

1. Atonement on (10 Tishri),

1. Keep the Feast of Tabernacles from 15 to 21 Tishri with Holy Days on 15 and 22 of the Seventh Month.

1. Tithe as per God’s Laws as a sign of Repentance and return to God.

1. Give three feast offerings a year at Passover, the Feast of Weeks and at Tabernacles.

Do these things and you shall be saved. Keep Hillel and fail to obey God and follow the Hadith and you will die. Teach men to disobey the Laws of God and you will be killed at the return of the Messiah. 

Those alive at the return of the Messiah will repent, or the elect under Messiah, Qasim and the Muhammads of the Middle East will remove all of you.

There is no negotiation. You have less than seven years to repent.  The ministry of the Churches of God have only half that time because they are already under judgment. Prepare for the Passover and turn and be saved.

Wade Cox

Coordinator General

Dictated by God to men?

One of the participants in my class on the Bible brought the following article from a blog to the class the other day.

Why is the Bible So Badly Written?

Millions of Evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible was dictated by God to men who acted essentially as human channelers. Each phrase is considered so perfect that it merits careful linguistic analysis to determine His precise meaning.

If that were the case, one would have to conclude that God is a terrible writer. Although some passages in the Bible are lyrical and gripping, many would get kicked back by any competent editor or writing professor— kicked back with a lot of red ink.

Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey. . . .  This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.

In the COG we were taught, just like the Mormons were taught, that God literally breathed the words into the minds of the scribes.  They essentially channelled the words of god onto paper.  It may make for a good simplistic story to feed people who have never critically studied the Bible, it is it really true or more precisely accurate?

Most stories in the Bible, particularly the early books of the Bible were never written down till long periods later.  The stories were just that, oral stories passed down through leaders, rabbi's, teachers and storytellers.  COG leaders expected you to believe that each time the story was orally told, not one single thing was ever changed in the storyline.  No storyteller ever changed things to fit the people he was talking to.  No storyteller ever blanked out while telling the story and substituted another word or phrase to make the story sound more logical.  Nope, the magical god of the church entered the mind of every prophet, sage, rabbi, and storyteller and caused them to say the exact same words for hundreds and hundreds of years without one single deviation from the original plot line being forgotten.

The article continues with this:

No question, the Bible contains beautiful and timeless bits. But why, overall, does it so fail to meet this mark? One obvious answer, of course, is that neither the Bible—nor any derivative work like the Quran or Book of Mormon—was actually dictated by the Christian god or other celestial messengers. We humans may yearn for advice that is “god-breathed” but in reality, our sacred texts were written by fallible human beings who, try as they might, fell short of perfection in the ways that we all do.

In the church many ministers proclaimed that they knew exactly who wrote every single book in the Bible.  They all said that because one man said so and that man could never be questioned.

Far from being a single unified whole, the Bible is actually a collection of texts or text fragments from many authors. We don’t know the number of writers precisely, and—despite the ancient traditions that assigned authorship to famous people such as Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—we don’t know who most of them were. We do know that the men who inscribed the biblical texts had widely different language skills, cultural and technological surroundings, worldviews and supernatural beliefs—along with varying objectives. 

How many church members knew about two different creation stories or three different 10 Commandment sets?

Bible writers adapted earlier stories and laws to their own cultural and religious context, but they couldn’t always reconcile differences among handed-down texts, and often may not have known that alternative versions existed. Later, variants got bundled together. This is why the Bible contains two different  creation myths, three sets of Ten Commandments, and four contradictory versions of the Easter story.

The Gospel According to Matthew (not actually authored by Matthew) was written for an audience of Jews. The author was a recruiter for the ancient equivalent of Jews for Jesus. That is why, in the Matthew account, the Last Supper is timed as a Passover meal. By contrast, the Gospel According to John was written to persuade pagan Roman prospects, so the author timed the events differently. This is just one of many explicit contradictions between the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

The contradictions in the Gospel stories—and many other parts of the Bible, are not there because the writers were confused. Quite the opposite. Each writer knew his own goals and audience, and adapted hand-me-down stories or texts to fit, sometimes changing the meaning in the process. The folks who are confused are those who treat the book as if theywere the audience, as if each verse was a timeless and perfect message sent to them by God.  Their yearning for a set of clean answers to life’s messy questions has created a mess. 

The Bible is a messy book about messy people living messy lives.  Is it all wrong?  No.   Myths, legends and societal stories all contain truths, whether or not the events actually happened.  Do all of the parables that Jesus told have to have been actual events or were they stories told to tell a truth more plainly for the people he was speaking to at the time?  Can the word of God contain non-factual stories in order to tell a truth?